Editorial: Finding the homeless a home

Edmonton Journal06.19.2013

A homeless person sits on the sidewalk as holiday shoppers admire displays in the windows of a downtown department store in Toronto on Dec. 23, 2012. Homelessness in Canada affects about 200,000 people every year and comes with a $7 billion price tag, the first-ever national report on the issue has found.

The bad news is that homelessness in Canada afflicts about 200,000 people every year, a largely faceless community that drifts along with a multibillion-dollar price tag for the rest of us.

The good news is that Edmonton is leading the way among communities struggling to finally do something about the problem.

It seems perverse to pull positives from a new national report that paints such a grim picture: 30,000 Canadians homeless on any given night, including almost 3,000 living unsheltered on the street; and at least 50,000 more on society’s periphery as “hidden homeless” forced to shack up with friends or relatives because they have nowhere else to go. There’s also a troubling over-representation of homeless youth, particularly gay and lesbian, and of aboriginal people, who dominate the homeless counts in almost every urban centre, with those numbers soaring the more one heads west and north.

The extensive report released Wednesday by the Canadian Homelessness Research Network and the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness finds that while there has been little progress made toward a permanent cross-country solution, there have been sporadic success stories at the provincial and municipal levels.

Since the Ed Stelmach government announced its 10-year plan to end homelessness back in 2008, the province has seen a 16-per-cent reduction in homelessness. The City of Edmonton’s strategy, one of Mayor Stephen Mandel’s most ardent causes, has forged a 42-per-cent reduction in homelessness since 2008 — leading the way among the country’s big cities. Calgary has also seen significant reductions.

Those number speak well of the people of this province. Premier Alison Redford has expressed her own commitment to the homelessness struggle and the recent Alberta Health Services budget showed encouraging signs of a focus on mental health — a huge factor in the scourge of homelessness. The Canadian Mental Health Commission estimates that as many as 50 per cent of all homeless people struggle with a mental health disorder.

As for this city, it seems clear that whoever emerges as the next mayor of Edmonton, he or she would be foolish to do anything to derail homelessness initiatives that will endure as among Mandel’s finest legacies.

One of the keys to the Alberta strategy is its housing-first philosophy, with an emphasis on finding permanent and adequate accommodations for individuals and then working to deal with their social problems. This marked a creative shift away from the traditional paradigm of emergency shelters and soup kitchens and it appears to be working.

The problems (and costs) of chronic homelessness are daunting, but they are not insoluble. A cohesive strategy uniting all levels of government is required. The small triumphs cited in this national report card provide genuine hope that Canada might someday shift from managing homelessness to ending it.

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